LONG POND, Pa. — Martin Truex Jr. has one of his four career Sprint Cup wins at Pocono Raceway.

He added his 10th career pole, too.

Truex extended Toyota’s recent romp with a lap of 179.244 mph to win the pole Friday.

Truex and Carl Edwards made it a 1-2 Toyota front row. Edwards just missed the top spot for Joe Gibbs Racing with a lap of 178.873, and he thought his No. 19 Toyota might have had enough to best Truex’s chart-topping speed.

“That must have felt really good because mine was great,” Edwards said.

Toyota has 10 wins this season and nine in the last 15 races, highlighted by consecutive wins by JGR drivers Matt Kenseth at New Hampshire and Kyle Busch last weekend at the Brickyard.

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“It’s a really neat time to be driving a Toyota for Joe Gibbs,” Edwards said. “Hopefully, we can keep this rolling.”

Truex won his third pole of the season in the Furniture Row Racing No. 78 Toyota and the 10th of his career. His win this season at Charlotte Motor Speedway might have been the most dominant performance by any Toyota driver in years.

Paul Menard, Denny Hamlin and Ryan Newman completed the top five.

Driving for Richard Childress Racing, Menard posted the surprise performance of the day. Menard has just two top-10 finishes all season and showed no signs of developing into a threat for making the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship.

But a crew chief switch might make the difference.

Menard topped the lone practice chart in his first race weekend with crew chief Danny Stockman. RCR dumped Justin Alexander for Stockman for Menard’s stretch run.

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Stockman has won two Xfinity Series championships during his seven years at RCR and he and Menard worked together in that series, including a win last year at Road America.

Menard made Sprint Cup’s championship chase last year but stands 23rd with just six races left in the regular season.

NASCAR SUSPENDED the crew chief for Kevin Harvick for an improperly installed lug nut at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Rodney Childers will not appeal the suspension or his $20,000 fine. He will miss Sunday’s race at Pocono Raceway.

Childers is the fifth crew chief suspended over a lug nut rule instituted by NASCAR earlier this season. The rule was put in place because teams were not applying all five lug nuts properly, in an effort to have faster pit stops.

Other penalties issued Wednesday by NASCAR were written warnings for twice failing prerace inspection to the teams of Kasey Kahne, Paul Menard and Matt DiBenedetto.

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Written warnings also were given to the teams of Kurt Busch and Aric Almirola for twice failing template inspection before prequalifying.

XFINITY: Erik Jones, Daniel Suarez and Elliott Sadler are guaranteed spots in the Xfinity Chase – as long as they start each of next nine races.

The rest of the series contenders need at least one win to ensure a playoff berth, which is why Saturday’s stand-alone race in Iowa is so big for all of them.

Brad Keselowski is the only Sprint Cup regular in the field, so there might not be a better chance for a winless driver to grab a victory that would all but lock up a Chase bid. There are nine Xfinity drivers who would earn a playoff spot with a win at Iowa Speedway.

“Definitely with not a lot of Cup guys in the field … it’s an even better opportunity for us. We’ve got a bunch of new guys and new cars. But we still have the last race winner here (Sam Hornish Jr.),” Richard Childress Racing driver Ty Dillon said. “It looks like it could be a good weekend for us to go out and notch that first win.”

Dillon is among the drivers who can vastly improve their playoff chances even if they don’t win. He’s third in the point standings, just 50 behind Suarez, the leader.


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